title: Infant speech-sound discrimination in noise.
abstract: The effects of noise on 7- to 11-month-old infants' speech-sound discrimination (/ba/vs/ga/) were determined using a conditioned head-turn procedure. Variation in performance as a function of signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) was estimated by testing each infant at four S/N's (-8, 0, 8, and 16 dB). Adults were tested for comparison at four S/N's (-12, -8, -4, and 0 dB). The S/N's were chosen based on pilot data. Performance varied monotonically with S/N for both age groups, but infants required greater S/N than adults to achieve comparable levels of performance. Both groups were also tested using an adaptive (1-up, 1-down) threshold procedure with a 3-dB step size. There was a group mean difference in threshold of 5.8-dB S/N favoring the adults. Weighted group psychometric functions, derived from the responses obtained in the adaptive runs, showed good correspondence with the data points at the four S/N's. The slopes of these functions were the same (7.5%/dB) for infants and adults. The results suggest that infants are at a greater disadvantage than adults when processing speech in noise and that concern over the effects of a noisy environment on the acquisition of language is justified. In addition, the adaptive threshold procedure can be used as an efficient way to estimate the limits of discrimination ability as a function of S/N or intensity, both for individual subjects and for groups of subjects, in developmental research.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pennsylvania.
authors.forename: R J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Nozza
authors.forename: R N
authors.initials: RN
authors.lastname: Rossman
authors.forename: L C
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Bond
authors.forename: S L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Miller
mesh_terms: D001306:Auditory Pathways / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D009622:Noise; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*